i see you, you see me, differently
by silverpaint
Summary: Kylo Ren is undercover at a rainy village on a distant planet where there are rumours of a child with the Force. So is Rey. [kylo-centric, warnings for child neglect, slurs, mention of physical violence, mention of suicidal ideation, crossposted to ao3]


i.

When Kylo Ren was ten years old and still called himself Ben Solo, you could see whether he was having a great day or not by how he went to sleep that night. For one, he would go to bed a whole lot earlier than he usually would have. He didn't really _have_ a bedtime. Leia _expected_ him to go to sleep at a reasonable time but she never checked to make sure. Therefore, like every other child, Kylo would stay awake until when he wanted to go to sleep. Han had a tendency to either not notice at all whether his kid was in bed or not (resulting in Kylo learning very early how terrible your neck hurts when you fall asleep in a chair) or on some rare occasion keep him awake talking until Kylo passed out of his own accord.

Kylo always liked layers. When it was a normal night and he was going to bed of his own volition, he would sleep in clothes that covered his arms and legs and even wore socks to sleep. He slept with a duvet tucked in around in to keep in the heat with a light blanket on top of that. In the summer he would pull the blankets over his head to block out the light.

(Here's another thing about Kylo Ren. He was never afraid of the dark. )

When it was a bad night…

…When it was a bad night, Kylo Ren slept with his clothes on, shoes and all. Two duvets on top, four blankets. From the doorway it was truly hard to see anything at all of the child underneath but the jumble of curls poking out at the top, the colour the exact same as his father's hair. He clutched the stun-only phaser his mother had given in just-in-case-of-an-enemy-attack loosely in his sleeping hand. It was times like this that the child he was would wish his parents had ever bought him a stuffed toy – _something_ to hold in his arms and pretend everything was alright.

When he was a few years older than that, he would have a bag with everything necessary in it sitting by his bedside just-in-case-of-an-enemy-attack, just in case he needed to flee, to run away.

When he slept like that, that's what the blankets were for. It was the only way he could sleep. It was insulating himself quite literally from the world. Kylo Ren was always good at running away from his problems.

ii.

Kylo Ren hasn't had the luxury of sleeping like he did as a child for a long time. Kylo Ren doesn't have the luxury of being Kylo Ren right now. Instead he's called Ivan Loire right now. He doesn't like it. Something in the _an_ pisses him off every time someone addresses him, but then again, when isn't he pissed off?

Or perhaps it's just the setting he's in that's pissing him off. It's been a long time since he was last in a school. The reminder of memories at every turn enflame the dark rage within his heart, sending him deeper into the shadow of the dark – _by the Force he's about to snap and throttle one of these brats._

They're all so _happy_. Kylo doesn't glower, if only for that he's worn the helmet for so long he's become used to expressing his rage through body language and action instead of his expression. Plus he might get sacked if he scares the kids. His hands clench and unclench on the handle of the bell umbrella. He marches along at the back of the queue, supposedly trying to make sure no children fall behind or off the high walkway above the way. The senior teachers are at the front, leading the procession of children all with their small umbrellas bobbing up and down.

One of these children has to have the Force. If not, his time has been wasted and Snoke would have been wrong about what he sensed in the Force. Kylo would have been able to sense the disturbance in the Force better a year ago, but ever since _her_ he has been completely thrown off. The Force is strong within her and when he closes his eyes and tries to concentrate, all he's drawn to is the glimmer of her strength somewhere in the universe instead of the fragile awakening of a child.

They arrive at the field shortly enough. Twenty-seven sets of waterproof boots stamp across a wooden bridge from the walkway to the school greenhouses. This planet's economy is based on farming, done by the manual labour of the humans who live there. There are no robots invented yet who can withstand for a consistent amount of time the relentless rain of the planet.

Kylo, not actually being an actual teacher and possessing none of the education he had claimed to have, lingers around the children and checks they are paying attention to the lesson. The senior teachers don't mind his lack of teaching – he was only hired to add another adult body to supervise.

The relentless rain of the planet means there is very little land. Everything resides on wooden or metal structures built high above the water. The relentless rain also means that the planet evolved some _interesting_ aquatic life that had a habit of snatching their children away.

"Hey, hey, mister."

He turns. There's a tiny child looking up at him through the translucent umbrella. An astoundingly tiny child. If he reached out and grasped the child's stick-thin arm Kylo has a feeling the child would just break instantly. Are children supposed to be that small? "…Yes?"

"You look very strange," the child tells him in the chirpiest tones he has ever heard.

Kylo squashes down the urge to use the Force to hold the child's umbrella ten metres above her head and in a perfect position for all the drops to fall on the child's head. _Think of the mission._ "Is that how you usually address strangers?"

The child stares up at him with wide eyes. "But you're a teacher, right?"

"Yes."

"Then you're not a stranger," the child says smugly as if it had won a point.

Kylo looks at the child. The child looks at him.

"You should be doing your work," Kylo says eventually and raises a gloved hand to gesture at the corn plant behind the child. She pouts and turns back. Kylo very deliberately does not touch the scar bisecting his face, though he's sure the children are staring at it.

That _should_ have been the end of it.

iii.

The good thing about Kylo's position as potential-sacrifice-to-the-water-demons-instead-of-the-children is that he gets to leave with the children at the end of the day. The senior teachers have to actually stay behind to finish paperwork and prepare for lessons. Hah. Kylo does his best to never, ever do paperwork. It drives Hux up the wall but it makes him happy.

…as happy as an agent of eternal darkness can be. The closest he gets to happiness is the satisfaction of destroying proponents of Light! Happier than _the Jedi_ anyway, Kylo thinks, bullshit turning to bitterness. They don't feel at all. No emotion in them, no fucking heart. If he ever sees fucking Lu—

"Hey, Mister Loire!"

Kylo starts, looking down to find he had very nearly tripped over a small child. By Darth Vader, they're everywhere. He has to start paying attention. After all, there is one child on this planet with the Force. If he accidentally tripped over it and sent it flying into the water to be devoured by fish with teeth – well, that would fulfil Snoke's plan.

What is he supposed to say? …ah, yes. "Can you find your parents? Your guardian?" he asks. The same small girl from before. Owing to the vulnerability of their children, parents and relations are quite religious about showing up to collect their children at the end of the school day. Kylo isn't supposed to let any children run off unaccompanied.

The child's face drops and Kylo knows with a sinking feeling that it was the wrong question to ask. She kicks at some stray gravel on the wood. "Um. It's alright. They'll be here soon. Um. I was wondering if you… would like to go to the sweetshop with me?"

If Kylo had been raised a normal child in a normal family, he might have naively went on asking about the parents. But he's been in the position of the left-behind child so often he knows how tortuously awkward it is to know that your parents aren't going to be there. Too fucking busy running a resistance or running away from dealers to look after a child. Why even have one?

He's furious, just fucking thinking about it, a sunflare of anger that shows up in his face and usually ends up in broken furniture. His lightsaber isn't on him. He exhales and then the anger is gone as quickly as it came, like it always is for him.

The child is backing away, terror on her face. (If Kylo is half as dark as he wants to be, he'd snarl and kick the kid away. His instincts betray him, as always.) "Yes, yes, I'll come," Kylo says quickly, without thinking. "Your parents _better hope_ they never meet me."

The terror dissipates into a wary, confused look. "Uh… okay?" Then she brightens. "So we're really going to go to the sweetshop then?"

…He's going to regret this. "Yes." He tries not to let the reluctance show.

"Can I hold your hand?"

" _No._ "

iv.

The walk to the sweetshop takes some time. It's hard for Kylo to figure out lengths of time in a world where the sky is permanently dark grey and he doesn't think anyone has ever seen the sun. All the time spent in his mask is good for something, as his chalk-white skin fits in perfectly. _And_ no one recognises him. He does hope his mission ends swiftly, as this planet lacks any hair dye. It's been a long time since he's wanted to wake up, look in the mirror and see his father but especially not… after the bridge.

He doesn't want to think about that.

The little girl chatters on about flowers and the correct conditions for the growth of her favourite one and Kylo listens politely. He's not supposed to have any hobbies (no one will ever know how stress-relieving it is for when he sketches out a drawing) but he finds himself asking questions. He finds himself actually having questions.

Eventually he poses the question he probably should have asked a while ago. "So, why exactly are we going to the sweetshop?" He has another question, which is _what is your name_ but the time for that passed long ago. He can just call her the child. It's fine with him.

She gives him a concerned look. "It's the _sweetshop_!"

"I've never been."

She shakes her head sadly. "You've never lived, Mister Loire."

She points at an absolutely nondescript shop that looks exactly like all the others. "There it is! You couldn't miss it!"

"…Of course."

At least he will be happy to get out of the cold weather and into the wooden shop. Their umbrellas protect them from the rain and the thick (black, in Kylo's instance) waterproof coats should protect them from the cold. Kylo finds it harder to take as he spends longer outside. The child is a native of this planet and therefore immune, but it's hard to adjust to a planet where everything is so damp all the time.

Kylo pushes open the heavy door with one hand easily and allows the child to slip in first. He lets down his umbrella and goes into the warmth of the shop with a sigh quite unbefitting the Master of the Knights of Ren. He looks to check the child is alright and hasn't been swallowed by a dolphin. He stops like the ground in front of him has just disappeared into nothing.

Of all people, it's _her_ standing beside the counter.

She looks at him like he's the rabid dog who just escaped from the cupboard during the dinner with the extended family and new in-laws.

To be fair, he doesn't think the look on his face is any better.

(The last time he saw her, there was a chasm opening between them. She grew more and more distant as the gap widened, becoming a smidgen of white with one shining line of blue. Then the blue disappeared and she turned and left him, the snow freezing his back while hot blood spat from his shoulder and tore his face in two. The scavenger who _defeated_ him.)

"Mister _Loire_!" comes a whining voice and breaks his spell. The child is standing over at a section of the store, waving at him. He looks at her numbly. "Over _here_!"

"Coming." Kylo answers automatically and strides over to the child through the busy store. Happy with his presence at her side, the girl returns to examining the wares. He can't help but stare at Rey.

She doesn't fit in easily among the native people of this planet. Her skin is too dark, burned by Jakku's merciless sun. Childhood on a desert planet is no good foundation for a stay on a planet where the rain never stops falling. She's wrapped up in so many layers it's outlandish, trying to keep in some heat. From what Kylo can see of her face, she's going through the stages of a strain of the common cold. He wants to buy her some cough medicine.

She's stomping over to them. " _Hello,_ " she says, an angry face, "Can I _assist_ you."

"You don't look so well," he half-says, half-asks.

Rey stares at him.

"Oh?" says the child, head tilting up. "Do you know her, Mister Loire?"

"Yes," says Kylo at the same time Rey says, "No."

They look at each other. Kylo remembers himself. "Ah," he says slowly. "I think I mistook you for someone else. The girl I'm thinking of was far more beautiful than you."

Rey's gaze has dropped to the child. He expects her to give him an angry glare or a cutting remark but she doesn't. Defying his expectations as always. Instead it falls to the child, who scolds him with, "That wasn't very nice, Mister."

"My apologies."

Rey crouches down. "Hey, what's your name?" She's trying to make her voice softer but the cold has roughed it. Kylo still wants to get her medicine. Would she accept medicine from him? Probably not. Most likely a wasted effort…

"Uh…" The child looks at her with an expression like a lion has walked up and is trying to ask her to go to dinner. "Gabriel?" How nice to know! Now Kylo can know its Gabriel who has dragged him to a sweetshop.

"Gabriel." Rey smiles. This is the first time he's seen it and suddenly his throat is stuck. Ack. Can't do anything. What the hell. Possibly some sort of Jedi mind-trick. "Would you like to come with me, Gabriel?"

"Uh…" Kylo jerks and looks down to discover she's clutching onto his hand. Gabriel's eyes have gone wide. He finds his gaze returning to Rey. "I think that's stranger-danger, miss."

Rey looks insulted, which is an expression Kylo is more familiar with and therefore finds himself on safer ground. Better not let… whatever happened there happen again. "Isn't… _isn't he a stranger too_?"

"No," Gabriel tells her confidently. "He's my teacher." She shuffles closer to him, as if to prove some sort of point. Kylo is vaguely disturbed by that statement, in a way he can't identify until he does. (If he did have a student of the Dark Side, it would be Rey and no one else.)

Rey looks horrified, so Kylo quickly jumps in with, "At the school. I'm a junior teacher at the school just down the way." Pause. "You must get many schoolchildren as customers."

"And I'm just a part-timer at a sweetstop." Rey looks like she is experiencing deep regret. She shakes her head, then turns to Gabriel and says in a calm, measured tone, "You will come with me."

Kylo's expression immediately turns into a sneer, for the Light being such a bunch of hypocrites. (But why this girl? What's so interesting about her? They're looking for a child with the Force, not Gabriel.)

Gabriel just stares back at Rey blankly. "Uh. No. I'm going to go buy some sweets. And you are _not_ invited." She gives Kylo a look like _isn't-that-stranger-weird_ and then pulls him along and away. "So what sweets do you like, Mister Loire? Liquorice? I think liquorice would match your clothes!"

Kylo looks back over his shoulder, at Rey standing there watching them walk away. There's a warning in her eyes. He smiles at her just to see what she'll do, which is stare at him with shock written over her face. Satisfied, he turns his attention back to Gabriel. Kylo isn't entirely sure of what just happened there with Rey's mind-trick failing, but he's distracted by Gabriel more persistently asking what kind of sweets he likes.

v.

They wander the wooden railway streets eating sweets. Gabriel splashes through the large puddles, eating milk chocolate with wild joy. Kylo has a paper bag of liquorice sticks in his pocket Gabriel insisted on buying when he told her he didn't have a sweet tooth. He ate one to please her. It's bitter, like his soul (and his coffee). He enjoyed it to his surprise but Kylo's under a strict contact to not give it away to anyone when he's enjoying a positive experience. It's already suspicious enough that he paid for the sweets with his own credits, much less being accompanied by a small child without flinging her into oblivion.

The thought is uncomfortable to him. He doesn't know these streets right now (although he is a quick learner when it comes to maps) but the duo are headed in the vague direction of where Gabriel lives. Still. What exactly is he doing here? He's struck by the cold thought that sends fear like ice into his stomach and mouth; that he's not being Dark enough.

If he's not Dark, he's not anything.

Kylo stops, face neutral and stomach churning. "Gabriel," he says, trying to sound normal even as he asks what he really does want to know, "Who's going to be at home when we get there?"

Gabriel makes a face and twists her hands together around the handle of the umbrella. She's not looking at him, instead staring at the ground as if it contains the answer to all her problems. "Ummm…" Nothing but the drip-drop of rain on the ground.

"Please tell me the truth," Kylo says very softly. It's lacking his usual hint of danger even though that's what he was going for. He ignores that fact.

In a very small voice, Gabriel admits, "Dad doesn't usually come home until really late, it's his work, um, Mum will be there but she doesn't really… notice that I'm there a lot…" Her shoulders hunch, like she's trying to make herself even smaller than she actually is.

Kylo looks at the child. He thinks to himself that it is indeed very Dark to kidnap a random child without telling their parents and without any intention of taking them back home. Yes. Very Dark indeed.

"Right then," he says, suddenly feeling very relieved. "You can simply come with me to my apartment." He holds out his non-umbrella-holding hand. "I'll even carry you." To make it look even more like a kidnapping, naturally.

Gabriel looks up at him with a bright grin. "A piggyback?! I love piggybacks!"

…Grandfather, help him. Kylo can't say no to that face. Then again, there isn't much that Kylo can actually say no to. If on the ride back Kylo wonders why no person ever went and rescued him from neglect, he reminds himself that Snoke did.

vi.

Once you're responsible for someone else's death, there is no going back. There is no justification you can make.

vii.

The door frustrates him. Kylo wishes he had his lightsaber on him instead of locked away in his apartment with all his mission details. This _is_ an undercover mission and he has to fit in and if he's attacked, well, telekinesis has always been his best use of the Force. He still wants it on him. He wants to smash this fucking lock to pieces. It's hard to juggle a small excitable child on your back, an umbrella tucked under your arm and try to find your keys in your pocket. Somehow Kylo manages it. He's strangely proud of himself for doing so.

Then there's footsteps, light but audible, and Kylo _knows_ that she's there. His anger is gone, just like that, because all he wants to do is pay attention to her. He straightens up and adjusts his grip on Gabriel and turns his head slightly to look behind him. (He thusly finds out that he is still slightly worried about how ill she looks.)

"Why did she follow us?" Gabriel's high-pitched voice, childish and curious, sounds through the air.

Rey looks at the girl and then glances to him. If Kylo wishes she would look longer at him when her gaze moves back to Gabriel, only he will know. "Look," she says, strong but half-awkward. "I don't know what sort of game you're playing but I'm not going to let you go off alone with this kid. Kidnap her and – take her to a ship or whatever you're going to do." Her glare darkens. "I know what you've been sent to do."

Resentment snarls down Kylo's spine. It's not fair to mention their true missions in front of someone who isn't involved. Does being undercover mean nothing to her? Slowly, without turning to properly face Rey, he lets Gabriel down from the piggyback. Then he passes the key to her and says very quietly, "Let yourself in, Gabriel."

He turns now and approaches Rey with a few steps. She's smaller than he remembers from this angle. Then again, he doesn't think he's had the opportunity to just stand close to her in a non-battle situation. (…she smells nice. Do not dwell on this.) Realising that all he's been doing is stare at her, he asks, "What are you playing at, Rey? This child is of no importance to my mission. Why are you going to such lengths as to follow me?"

Rey's eyes widen, a startled look breaking over her face (like the dawn, Kylo thinks). "You _don't know_?!" Her face shuts down, suspicion making its grand return. "No. If you want to play the ignorance game, that's fine. But I'm not leaving you alone with that child. And what were you thinking, not bringing her home to her parents? They're going to be so worried!"

She's caught him out there. Unnerved, Kylo can't just say _well then her parents ignored her until they had lost her for good, just like mine_. He swallows. "And someone who never had parents knows so much about how they would react?" Kylo retorts. He doesn't want to be in this conversation anymore.

He's expecting anger, but it doesn't happen. Instead Rey just looks up at him with a calculating glint in her brown eyes. "I see how it is," she says, ice cold. "But I'm not leaving you with the child."

Kylo crosses his arms. The lightsaber is still in the apartment. Rey is stronger with the Force than he is and anyway telekinesis is hard to work when they are so close together. "Well I guess you can just come inside and stay for dinner," he snaps, irritated at the standoff.

Her reaction unsettles him once more. Rey stares at him, mouth parted with something like surprise. It's replaced by a disgruntled look. "You really are strange," she says slowly and full of disdain. "But I'll take you up on that offer, since I can't leave the child. As I've already said."

What…? It's Kylo's turn to stare at her, since he was not remotely expecting that. His mouth opens and closes. Even if it's her, he can't exactly sit down and have dinner with his enemy. _What would Darth Vader think._ …What would Darth Vader do in this situation?

Let his enemy push past him and into the apartment, apparently.

"No." Kylo says loudly into the empty air. Wheeling around, he says even louder and more pointedly, "No! I said no!"

Looking back over her shoulder, Rey looks utterly unimpressed. "Oh, why won't you shut up?"

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Gabriel shrink into the corner she's in. His throat closes. He thinks of being that small himself, of loud arguments heard through the walls, of curling into himself and trying to pretend he isn't living in a situation like this. He always used to think it must be his fault for being born, until the day he realised it wasn't him at all, it was them.

"Be civil for the child's sake," he hisses at Rey. She gives him a blank look. Of course, what Rey had said had been nothing more than a sharp tone, something he should let slide off his back. But sharp tones are how _everything_ started. Kylo looks at Gabriel, throws up his hands in a what-can-I-do-about-it fashion just to show her there's nothing he can do, and collapses onto his sofa.

"Mister Loire, why is the sweetshop lady here?" Gabriel's thin voice is louder to his ears, as she's come over to stand beside the sofa now. "…is she angry with us?"

"She's just angry at me. She's always angry at me." Pause. How is she taking that? How would he have taken that? "Do not worry, no one is going to get hurt. We're not going to fight," he looks intently at Rey, "even if she is angry at me." Rey mutters something that sounds like 'half the galaxy is angry at you'.

"But why is she _here_?"

Their eyes meet, black to brown. Holding Rey's gaze, Kylo replies, "She wants to stay for dinner. Apparently. I'll be cooking, since I lack trust in letting her go and handle certain utensils in the kitchen." In all honesty, if Kylo didn't go cook he's pretty sure he would end up stabbed while Rey escaped with Gabriel.

He still doesn't why she wants Gabriel, but… ah, Kylo will figure it out later. That's his motto in life. Think about it later, act now. (…that might explain the way he wakes up sometimes in a cold sweat during the night, the heavy feeling in his chest when he looks at families on outings, which might just be named something beginning with an r-)

"What's her name?"

"Felicity Dameron," Rey says straight-faced (Kylo twitches at the name), "And I would prefer it if you addressed your questions to me instead of him. There is no _she_ here."

Scared, Gabriel goes to clutch onto the closest part of the adult she thought she could trust. Her hands therefore end up digging into Kylo's hair, causing him to yelp out in an incredibly undignified manner. Owowowowowowowowow-!

Rey laughs. Gabriel releases her grip with a guilty, "S-Sorry…"

Kylo rolls over, props himself up with an arm. There are not tears in his eyes, okay… his hair is just sensitive from all the dye he puts in it! (It's really a miracle it's still so thick and strong, seeing as he's been dying his hair for half his lifespan.) "That's okay, that's okay… just, if you're going to touch my hair, be a bit gentler. Okay?"

Gabriel nods, eyes wide. Then she promptly reaches out and strokes his hair. "You have very nice hair, Mister Loire," she tells him, smiling. "Just like a cat!"

Kylo is regretting his entire life. He is also afraid that Rey is going to tell the entire Resistance about this. …then again, his mother has a bunch of baby stories that could one-up this completely. The only option is to finish this mission as soon as possible, find a nice family to give Gabriel to, get back to Snoke, stamp down the Resistance, somehow convince Rey to be his loyal apprentice, live happily ever after without any embarrassing stories.

Rey is still smirking. Kylo glares at her. "Well, well, well, Mister Ivan Loire," she says, and it almost sounds dangerous. "You really are good with children, aren't you? But I think perhaps you might give up this teaching job and just become a professional model."

Kylo sighs and buries his face in the pillow.

viii.

The dinner that evening might honestly rank on one of the weirdest, most bizarre moments of Kylo's life. Bear in mind that he's lived twenty-nine full years, was once friends with Poe Dameron, and spends most of his time trying to fulfil the will of a dead man who had a change of heart at the end of his life. Kylo has seen some pretty strange stuff in his life.

He cooks vegetable pasta salad and chunky minestrone soup. Kylo likes cooking (although he will never tell anyone), it takes his mind off other thoughts. He chops and follows memorised instructions methodically. Gabriel sits on a chair and although his answers to her quite voice are quite stilted, eventually she just starts chattering away. It doesn't matter that he's relatively useless at holding a conversation and can't remember the last time he talked to a child before he went on this mission but after… after Snoke first talked to him.

Rey leaves the room at some point while he's preparing the food. Kylo is suspicious but he can't leave the room. He can't leave Gabriel _and_ the food might burn. Burnt food is just the worst thing in the world. She slides back in eventually and when Kylo looks at her with a look that communicates what-are-you-up-to, she blinks back with an utterly innocent expression.

They sit down for dinner, which Kylo still doesn't entirely have his head around. He's sitting down to eat dinner (which he cooked! When was the last time he cooked for someone other than himself?) with a random child he kidnapped, and his worst enemy who had given him the scar on his face. There is no way this can actually be a civil meal…? Would Darth Vader do this? Ah, Grandfather, help him to be Dark. That's what he has to be. Is this okay to do for someone who is the Master of the Knights of Ren?

Think about it later, he consoles himself.

He sets down the food. Three glasses of cold orange juice for the three of them. (On a sidenote: the part of the planet they're in does not have enough spare land to farm animals. Therefore, everything edible is plant-based. It's a good idea, Kylo understands, but he does miss rare steak.) Beside Rey's glass he sets down an unopened packet of painkillers.

She looks at him, brow creased.

"You have a cold, don't you?" Kylo sits down.

She picks up the packet and inspects it. Kylo can only suppose what she thinks of it, as she sets it down again without opening it. He realises suddenly he's staring and picking up his fork, begins to eat. His cooking is suitable, although he does wish he had more time to practise to become better at it. At least it's better than Stormtrooper rations; they are disgusting and Kylo hates them with a passion.

To his left, Gabriel is eating like she's never ate food before. Her elbows are on the table and she isn't actually using her knife, just tearing the food apart with her fingers. The only thing Kylo wants to tell her is that if she eats so fast she'll get indigestion. He doesn't in the end, because he doesn't want to give the impression that he doesn't want her to eat.

Rey is eating at a steadier rate, at least. Although, she's staring at her food like she's never seen it before either. He wonders why, but he doesn't ask her either. Jakku, in the glimpse of her mind he saw on the ship… they made their food from portion packets, instant food. There were many times that she had gone hungry.

Kylo looks at her now and thinks to himself: what are you thinking, inside your head?

He doesn't know. He will probably never know.

Rey and Gabriel both get seconds. (Kylo doesn't notice it, but when his back is turned, Rey takes one of the painkillers.)

ix.

After dinner, Rey pulls him aside. Gabriel is drawing with some spare paper and pencils Kylo had (just lying around, he said), so she doesn't notice the conversation. The two of them stand in the shadow of the kitchen door and by Darth Vader, Rey is so very small compared to him. What does she want…?

"Look what I have," she hisses and holds up his three-forked lightsaber with a triumphant smile.

"You little-," he snarls, stepping forward but Rey just looks up at him with a winning glint in her eyes and her finger lightly on the button. She must have found it when she disappeared from the kitchen. And his mission details. Damn it damn it damn it! "What do you _want_?"

"I want you to _stay here_ ," she tells him. "I know you won't go anywhere off this planet without this lightsaber. Didn't you build it yourself?" She waves it around.

His eyes tracking it, he mutters, "Yes."

"Listen here. Since you're so insistent on having Gabriel stay here, I'm staying here too."

His mouth falls open. Kylo just stares at her, not knowing what to make of it. Does she realise how strange that sounds? Does she realise what will happen if anyone ever finds out they were – living together, even if only for one night or a while? Does she realise that they are currently on a mission with very opposite intentions?

He has to find this rumoured child with the Force and kill them. Kylo is assuming that his use of the Force will allow him to know which child it is. He has yet to find them, but surely he will know immediately when he does find the child. Surely? And yet she wants to stay with him and a random child, she, who obviously wants to take this to-be-found child back to Luke?

(Kylo would rather kill a child than give it to Luke.)

His mouth shuts. Then he says dryly, "You do realise this is a one-man apartment?"

"Well, what were you planning to do with Gabriel?"

"Let her sleep in the bed and myself sleep on the sofa."

"There are two sofas," Rey points out, as if she's scored a point. She smiles at him and he is quite suddenly unable to speak. "I'm glad we all agree, Ren." She continues. "I'll keep this lightsaber until I get back. You will not be leaving this planet."

She turns and steps across the room to go out. Gabriel looks up and then bites her lip. "Are you going somewhere, Miss Dameron?" (Kylo twitches.) She twirls a pencil around in the air anxiously.

Rey crouches down. Kylo thinks she might be smiling but he can't quite see from where he's standing. If she won't trust him at all alone with Gabriel (well, she's not supposed to trust him remotely – it's not like he trusts her…) then he won't trust her alone with Gabriel either (although he doesn't trust her! Kylo Ren does not trust anyone!).

"No, no, I'm just going to get something. I'll be back soon." Rey holds up her pinky finger. "I'll promise you that?"

Gabriel stares. "…What's that?"

"You kind of hook the little finger around someone else's little finger and then it's a promise, okay?"

(It reminds him of Poe.

Poe Dameron. They knew each other as children, in what seems like a lifetime ago. Poe was daring and charming and always smiling. When everything was awful and Kylo didn't want to go home, Poe could still bring a smile to his face. On the worst day of Kylo's life, Poe had hugged him tight. He was the taller one, fifteen to Kylo's thirteen. He had whispered into Kylo's ear, breath warm against his skin, _promise me you won't forget about a little scamp like me, huh? Come back to me one hell of a Jedi._

Well. Promises get broken.

It had been a long time since he had thought of Poe. It's the truth, really, that he doesn't care about Poe Dameron anymore. He cares more about that absence of care, like a nagging thought that really, shouldn't he be giving more of a fuck about this? But they were two very different people, nowadays. Sometimes life doesn't work out how people had planned it to go. Sometimes the people you thought you would know forever end up strangers to you.

That's just how life is.)

He's missed whatever Gabriel and Rey said next. It doesn't matter – it wasn't really a conversation for him. Rey stands and goes to the door, wrapping herself up in her coats and scarves. He watches her idly. She looks at him once, and then goes out the door.

"You seem very sad, Mister Loire," Gabriel breaks the silence. "Do you want to draw a picture with me?"

Kylo smiles at her. "Call me Ivan," he says. "And yes. I would like to very much."

x.

When Rey returns, Kylo is too engrossed in drawing an incredibly detailed picture of a dog for Gabriel from memory to give her anything more than a cursory nod. (He doesn't see the relief in her eyes that he's actually still there.) Later on, it occurs to him that he has no idea where Rey stored her stuff. He searches the entire apartment looking for where her hiding place is, but to no avail.

Rey keeps smirking at him, but Kylo is _so pissed off_. She can root through _his_ possessions, but he can't even find her stuff in the apartment he rented first?

At least she does give him his lightsaber back.

xi.

Tucking Gabriel into bed is easier than he expected. Kylo didn't really know what to expect, seeing as he is utterly unequipped for tucking a child into bed. It's like asking a Wookie to become a hair-dresser. She's old enough to tuck herself in, anyway. He goes in and stiltedly asks her if she's okay and when she's fine he turns the light out. There's a chorus of goodnights and when he returns to the livingroom he's equal parts glad she didn't ask for a bedtime story and confused that, what, this is what normal families are like?

…No. Because the people in this apartment are _nothing_ resembling a family. A kidnapped child and two worst enemies. (Kylo still wonders what normal families _do_. Then again, he's been wondering that all his life.)

He's sleeping on the couch tonight. Focus on that. There's two sofas in the living room indeed; they face each other, with a coffee table in between them, the one on which Gabriel and Kylo had been drawing earlier in the day. Rey's standing there, dressed for bed in clothes that cover her legs and arms. Jakku does get awfully cold at night. She looks at him and her face is like she has a default expression for looking at Kylo: unimpressed and slightly scornful. It is to be expected – they are enemies, after all.

"There's blankets in the closet there," Kylo tells her, avoiding direct eye-contact. It feels different, stranger, to be talking to Rey without Gabriel in the room. Like forgetting why he shouldn't be fighting her right now.

They don't talk. Kylo always keeps far more than enough blankets in the closet when he's in a room he knows he'll have to sleep in for an extended while. His room in the now-destroyed Starkiller Base had so many blankets Hux once snidely told him he was becoming more of a hoarder of blankets than a stalker of Darth Vader. Ah, Hux. Kylo has never hated someone so happily.

Kylo makes his bed on the sofa anyway (two large duvets) and then goes to get changed in the bathroom. Black t-shirt, black shorts. What? He likes the colour black. It goes with everything (especially black) and it makes deciding what colour to wear in the morning far less of a hassle, since the answer will always be black. _It's not because of Darth Vader, okay?!_

Contemplating how surreal everything feels, he tucks himself into his make-shift bed. He holds up his hand idly and uses the Force to turn the light off with telekinesis. The silence is stifling. He looks over at Rey, finds her looking at him, then looks away quickly.

"Goodnight," he says.

"Yes, goodnight," Rey answers back.

Kylo turns over on his side and tries to fall sleep. He flops back onto his back. He's usually quite good at falling asleep… ah, what else can he do? One Death Star, Two Death Star, Three Death Star, Four Death Star. A clock ticks somewhere. Annoyingly loud. He should smash it. Except he can't, because he's pretending to Gabriel that he's Ivan Loire, not Kylo Ren. He stares up at the ceiling. It's fuzzy, all shades of grey that seem to slip over each other in the dark. Kylo is an old hand at lurking in the dark, but it would be great if he could actually see in it. What would he have to do to himself to be able to see in the dark? He could ask Snoke -

"I can't sleep either," Rey whispers across the distance between them.

Kylo snorts. "What made you think I can't sleep?"

"The whites of your eyes in the dark?" Her voice is tinged with curiosity.

Kylo closes his eyes, and thinks of the ship and the memories of a girl being unable to fall asleep. An island in an ocean. "I suppose you've never fallen asleep in someone else in the room, and that's keeping you awake?"

Silence. "I suppose you think you've got me all figured out," Rey's voice, curt, like someone disappointed, "But you don't. You know…" she trails off. Kylo looks over, opening his eyes and finds her looking at him through the dark. They hold each other's gaze. "Before I came here, I thought I had you all figured out, Ren. But now I've got no idea what's in your head. I don't understand you at all."

It's quiet. He can hear his own breathing easily; if he listens hard he can hear Rey's; if he uses the Force he can hear Gabriel's. Finally he says, "Don't call me Ren."

He chose this. Kylo chose to become the Master of the Knights of Ren and therefore take on Ren as a surname. But it's always sounded far too much like… ack. He could not help it that Ren sounds like Ben.

"Then what do I call you?"

Kylo is what he chose, for real. Kylo. What's wrong with choosing your own name?

"Kylo."

"…Kylo, then. But why are you doing all this?"

He turns his head away. Ah. There it is. That question, always that question. Why, why, why. Why? He's asking himself that same question too. But when you go too far down one road, there's no turning back. You can't turn back time. Can't undo spilt milk. There comes a time when all you can do is what other people tell you to, what other people expect you to do.

Kylo takes a deep breath and begins to recite, "Peace is a lie, there is only passion. Through passion, I gain strength. Through strength, I gain-"

"What are you talking about?"

Kylo looks over and Rey is giving him a what-the-fuck expression, as best as he can tell in the dark. Or perhaps he just knows. "The… the Sith Code?"

"Oh." She's quiet for a moment. "Like the Jedi Code, I suppose."

"Yes."

"But you're not a Sith."

"No," he admits.

Another lull. Kylo thinks to himself that Rey is wrong. He doesn't have her figured out. He knows she's stronger than him in every way, she knows she was lonely on Jakku, knows that she has friends in the Resistance. He doesn't know why, if she's so interested in Gabriel, why she doesn't just defeat him and leave. ( _Kick his ass, dump the body, get the girl,_ a voice whispers somewhere inside his head.) Why she's still here, going to sleep in the same room as the enemy.

"But that's not what I was asking," Rey continues. "I was asking why you're doing this. _Gabriel_."

What answer can he give to that? What answer can he possibly say? He can't say _I can sympathise with her_. He can't. The Dark are all for emotion and passion but he has to keep his secrets here. He can't say _her parents aren't good enough to look after her if they treat her like that_. It crawls up between his lungs, closing his tongue, a bad taste on his tongue. Fear.

Anything else. He'll talk about anything else.

"Poe," he says suddenly. "How is Poe?"

There's an incredulous cough. " _What?!_ "

"I'm asking how Poe Dameron is," Kylo says in a stronger voice.

"Well, he's alright? Same as ever. Going out with Finn now, hah. They're good for each other." Her voice had turned warm to talk about her friends. Kylo realises this was a bad route to go down, as he now knows how warm Rey sounds when she talks about her friends. Then again, regret in hindsight is not an unknown feeling for him at all.

(He's being torn apart. He's been cutting up inside, conflict against conflict against conflict, himself against himself, since before he was even Kylo Ren. He took this path because he wanted to be better. He wanted to find some fucking harmony, some peace of mind. Other people get to sit down and be content and be okay and he he he-.

He knows he's fucked up somewhere. He knows he's messed his life up and he doesn't know how to fix it at all and isn't it better, just doing what Snoke tells him to do? Being what everyone expects of the guy who tried (tries) to be Darth Vader? He's twenty-nine and he's done so much that it's too late to go back to being fifteen and say 'hey, I might be better off on this side, even if it seems like hell now'.

There's a lot of things he's done that he regrets. A lot of things he failed to do.

He took this path because he wanted something better than the life he was living, because it was something he could do to get out of what others were doing to him. Now he's cut up even more than before with that sharp stick called regret, he's torn into pieces because of what he's done to others.

Does this pain ever end? Does life ever get easy?)

"I'm going to sleep," he says abruptly, after a long silence. He rolls over and buries his face in the pillow, pulling the blankets over his head.

Rey stares at him for a long time before she falls asleep. But he doesn't see that and she doesn't say anything. The rain drums on all through the night and into the morning.

xii.

The next morning, they all awaken and have breakfast. Kylo cooks again (as much as one can cook breakfast). While he's doing the washing-up, a pair of yellow rubber gloves gracing his hands instead of black leather, he says to Gabriel, "You don't _have_ to go to school if you don't want to." Kylo smooths back some strands of hair from in front of his face, gets suds of washing up bubbles all in a line over his face and hair, realises and then tries to walk it off as if it was intentional.

"I _want_ to go to school," Gabriel protests, swinging her feet on her chair. "I like learning, it's fun. Did you know that bananas are the fruit in highest demand?" Kylo thought, _no wonder for such a rainy planet._

"Really?" he asks, and smiles as best as he can at her. (Kylo's smile is not very nice, but Gabriel doesn't seem to notice.) "Tell me more."

"Well yesterday in school we were talking about cover cropping. That's kind of like intercropping, except the cover crop is to keep the soil all together and it gives, uh, nutrients to the soil. And you don't harvest the cover crop. Isn't that so cool?"

"Yes, yes it is," Rey's voice breaks in. "So what's intercropping?"

The three of them walk to the school in the pouring rain as usual. It turns out that when Rey had disappeared the previous night, she had managed to sign herself up to be a junior teacher at the school as well. Obviously so that Kylo would not be left alone with Gabriel. Kylo thinks it was either a miracle from the Force, incredible use of charm or a Jedi mind trick. No one should be able to get a job so quick, especially one around children, but Rey defies all expectation.

Kylo doesn't like the long walk, if he's being entirely truthful and pretending to _not_ be a whingy bastard. Even though the bell-shaped umbrellas protect them from the rain, the cold air is still sharp on his bare face. He's not used to having his face bare, letting the scar show. It twinges as they walk. Kylo would never admit it under pain of a barber, but he's worried about his hair. Is the reason that it's still so healthy even after so much black dye poured into it because it was safe under his helmet? Is exposing it to actual air going to harm it? These are real fears!

When they reach the school, everyone is still preparing to start the school day. Gabriel leaves them to go sit with the other children in the play area, which seemed to mean scribbling drawings on paper with crayons. One of the senior teachers straightens up from where she's looking at something on the desk and looks over at them. She pushes her glasses up her nose with one quick motion, as if she was so practised that doing so that it was simple muscle memory. "That's who you have to go to," Kylo says to Rey with a nod and off they go.

"Miss Dameron! I think we met yesterday." Her voice is unusually soft for her appearance.

"Yes, we did."

"Mr Loire here can pull you up to speed, I trust?" She arches her eyebrow at Kylo. It pisses him off under the surface, like it always does when anyone who doesn't really know him tells him what to do. He squashes the feeling down because it's childish and he can't use the lightsaber in his pocket (no _way_ is Rey getting a hold of it again) because he doesn't want to lose Gabriel's trust.

"…Yes."

She nods and goes swiftly and it's over, just like that. Trust Kylo when he thinks that the First Order have a far better background search for cog-level employees. (For one: the First Order _is_ your background.)

Rey leans closer to him, whispers, "Is that _it_?!"

He leans in to her without thinking and answers, "Apparently so."

Rey looks up at him, with those brown eyes of hers. She's so much stronger than him, Kylo realises suddenly, so much more discerning. He feels like he's lost some battle now that he didn't know he was fighting. (Or maybe he wasn't fighting at all.) "Don't worry about 'pulling me up to speed'," she says to him in a low voice, softened by amusement. "You don't need to look after me; I'll look after you."

(Kylo has never believed anyone who said those words to him before, but he can't help but believe Rey.)

He doesn't say anything back at all. The senior teacher looks back over her shoulder with that arched eyebrow and barks, "Stop staring into each other's eyes and _work_!"

Kylo jumps, and whatever that was, it's broken. He steps away from Rey, placing some space between them. It's like she's the sun; dangerous to be near and he needs a few million miles of space from her. (…but once you've seen sunlight, you don't want to be left in the dark.)

They still don't really have that much to do. They linger with the other junior teachers at the back while the senior teachers are talking the children through what they're going to do today in the greenhouses. Kylo keeps an eye on Gabriel, who is sitting with the other children, but not totally _with_ them. There's no-one who turns to smile at her when the teacher isn't looking, or leans over to say something even when the teacher _is_ looking. But what can he do about that? Kylo is the very last person in the galaxy who knows anything about having friends, or keeping them.

Rey asks him in a quiet voice what exactly 'legumes' and 'symbiotic relationships' are. Kylo isn't completely sure himself but he explains what he thinks it is to her anyway. The junior teachers are all standing in their own little clumps of people as well; with some surprise Kylo realises that other people are most likely thinking of him and Rey as a clump. Like they're _friends_ or something. That's… a weird thought.

Eventually the kids go out and they start the march to the greenhouses, umbrellas equipped. He looks over the railings as they walk. They're made of thick, solid wood with no gaps, taller than a child's heads and yet the greenish darkness of the water down below makes even him be wary. It feels like there's something _to be_ wary of in the water below. He looks away from the dark gloomy depths of the ocean below.

Rey and Kylo end up walking with Gabriel near the back of the march. It's more like Kylo just ends up with them. He's intending to scan the surrounding children looking for any with the Force but he ends up being distracted when Rey and Gabriel talks to him, the latter chattering about some sort of festival that's approaching soon. He should be better at finding this rumoured child, anyway – the Force should tell him, shouldn't it? Won't the Force set him free?

He is on a mission. He has to remember that. He is on a mission and he should not be – wasting time talking to his worst enemy, the girl who defeated him! Who struck a scar into his face and shoulder! He should have fought her as best as he could the moment he saw her. …Then again, he doubts (knows) that he can (cannot) beat her. And he still… he still can't say no to Gabriel.

Ah, never mind. Think about it later.

"You know…" Gabriel starts to say and then cuts herself off. "Nothing."

"I don't think that was nothing," Kylo says, and then tries not to flinch at how much he sounds like his _fathe_ r. Grandfather, please don't let Rey have noticed that flinch, he silently begs the sky. He glances at her, find Rey already looking at him and then they both look away hastily.

"It's just…" Gabriel toys with the hem of her waterproof coat. Little drops of rain slide down her umbrella. "All my stuff is kinda…"

"Is kind of what?" Rey prompts.

"Still at my house," Gabriel finishes very quietly and reluctantly.

Rey and Kylo trade glances. In one look they both understand what exactly they have to do. Rey turns her attention back to Gabriel and says, "Alright. You draw up a list of what you want from your house, and we'll take care of that."

After Gabriel has gone into her lesson, standing attentively with the other children, Rey leans against the wall beside Kylo. They look at each other. "You know," Rey says to him, "In all my life, I never expected that I would end up in this situation with you."

For a moment Kylo doesn't reply. Then he says, "Sometimes you don't know what life will do to you."

xiii.

At the end of the day, the senior teacher calls for him just as they're leaving. "Mr Loire!"

Kylo turns, irritated. He had just been about to leave; he has his coat and umbrella and Gabriel is all wrapped up too. Rey is taking her time because she insists on wearing that _ridiculous_ amount of scarves. Really, there's honestly no need for it. "Yes?"

She beckons him closer and so closer he is forced to step. "I see you're looking after Gabriel now," she says in a voice low enough for only them to hear, eyes flickering for a second to where Rey is standing. "And Miss Dameron is too."

Kylo stills. He looms over the teacher, using his height (he's not scared he's not scared he's not scared) and asks very carefully, "And? What's the problem?"

She arches her eyebrow. Might as well call her Ms Eyebrow or Ms Archer with how much she does it. "Who said there was a problem? That child does need someone to look after her." Pause. There's a silent _but_ in the air. "But all children eventually want to return to their parents, Mr Loire. Even if they don't want her, one day she'll want to leave you."

Kylo stares at her, pale-faced. "No," he snaps, but his voice falters. "Not all children."

He storms away and pretends not to notice the gaze of the senior teacher upon him as he goes.

xiv.

"This," Rey mutters, "is absolutely ridiculous."

Kylo has to agree. However, what else can they do? Gabriel is missing her teddy bear and have you tried saying no to her face? It's impossible. What if she started crying? Two of the most powerful Force users in the galaxy (he likes to think. The truth is that Kylo is pretty low on the list of 'my connection to the Force is damn strong') done in by a crying child.

He's really not doing well enough, is he? Here he is at the beck and call of a child, because somehow he cares about her. Although the Dark side is full of emotion, used to strengthen their connection to the Force… does giving a damn about some kid count as selfish emotion?

They're sneaking along, finding their way to Gabriel's old house, of all places to be. The day is long done and night has commenced but the rain is still falling, as always. They walk along streets unlit, wooden railways tramping beneath their feet. This planet was not made for espionage; no one wants to do activity in the rain and it is so very hard to keep your footsteps quiet when there are puddles everywhere.

Kylo isn't actually one for spying; he sends out others to do that. Kylo is too tall and broad, his step too heavy and his anger issues tend to break his cover. Temper-tantrums with a lightsaber identify him far more easily than he's truly comfortable with. The only reason he's on this undercover mission is because he's Force-sensitive. Rey would be far better at it than him. She's smaller and quicker and while she looks harmless she's still dangerous enough to fight anyone. (She told him she could have kicked his ass with a stick and quite honestly even though it sounds hilarious he's going to believe her.)

Kylo looks down over the railing into the water. At night it's even darker, a wavering black that soaks up what little light it can get. With an uncomfortable feeling in his chest, he thinks to himself: can whatever creatures that lurk in the water snatch adults too?

"I think we'll be fine. We do have lightsabers, don't we?"

Kylo stills. He looks at Rey who looks back with her clear brown eyes. Kylo truly can never really tell what's on her mind. Something in his mind whispers _reach out_ , to try to enter her mind, but he knows that she would just use it to look into his. "How did you know I was thinking that?"

Pause. Is she weighing up her words? Is she deciding whether or not to reply? "You're like an open book."

"…Go on?"

"It's always clear what you're thinking, what you're feeling. Even if your body language doesn't give it away, your eyes do." To his surprise, Rey reaches up and taps the side of his head. They're standing very close now. Her last words are quieter. "You give it away through the Force as well."

He stares at her. The spot where she had touched him burns. Has she been… casually reading his emotions all this time? "Look, I'm not… I'm not someone who…" He stops. He doesn't know what point he was trying to make. Then again, she can probably read that off him.

"It's alright," she says to him and her voice is soft. Kylo might have said something if he could work out what he wanted to say, but instead she breaks him off by pointing lowly to a wooden house and saying, "We're here."

So they are. It should just be a simple thing to do – sneak in, get what Gabriel wanted, and get out. It should be simple. No; it's going to be simple. Kylo won't let worry stand in his way. Nothing will stand in his way. The house looks run-down as they approach, peeled paint and cracked guttering. Rey slips inside first through one of the windows on the second-floor and Kylo goes in after her.

"It was the second door, that's what she said, right?" Rey whispers to him. Kylo whispers back an affirmative.

Inside the house is a strange mixture of messy and clean. Peeling wallpaper, un-hoovered carpets with the corners chewed off. But despite that it's somehow sparse, lacking the clutter he's seen in other people's homes. The door to Gabriel's room doesn't actually have a handle on it and so Rey just pushes it open.

Gabriel's room is much the same. It's messy, books with no covers on the floor and trashcan full and yet lacking any toys, or whatever he thinks kids would have. Rey goes to the chest of drawers and opening it, gets the clothes that Gabriel wants from her list. It's a small amount of clothes she wants; Kylo notices that most of the clothes in the chest of drawers are actually too small for someone of Gabriel's size. The chest of drawers jams when Rey tries to close it and she has to kick it to get it to close.

Kylo goes over to the bed, unmade with covers thrown back and crumpled and picks out a teddy bear from it. It's grey and limp and has a little red hat. When he handles it, it's like it might fall apart in his hands. He gives it to Rey, who has managed to find the rest of what Gabriel wanted (an exactingly specific book, a little pile of necklaces). She looks at it, places it at the top of the bag so that its little face peeks out.

"I had something like this back on Jakku," she says to him, a smile playing on the corner of her lips. Kylo gazes at her. Why is she telling him something like this of her own volition?

"Did you. What was it?"

Rey snorts. There's a trick to this tale, somehow. "A little orange man I made. I pretended he was Luke Skywalker and we acted out all the old tales. The Death Star, his duel with Darth Vader. Vrummmmmmmmmmmmmmmm, vrummmmmm…" Then she chuckles slightly and looks at him like she's daring him to say something.

It does grit on his tongue, her words. (He hated Luke even before he met him for the first time.) What does she expect him to say? "Darth Vader's death was a tragedy," he says, because it was, because at least that guy had some fucking idea of what he wanted to do with his life.

Rey just looks at him with some intent in her eyes, like she's stripping him raw to see how he works. He doesn't necessarily like it. "We should go now," he tells her, but he's asking for permission. She nods and they move out of the room, but there's still a tension in the air, words unsaid and fights unfought.

They move down the corridor to go out and there's voices downstairs. Both of them freeze.

"…and you, you're the bitch that let her wander off, isn't it fucking obvious it's all your fault? You're goddamned useless. Spend all day doing shit-all and then when I come back you act like you've had such a hard day. I'm telling you, this is the last you'll see of me. I'll walk off as soon as you go to sleep. Mark my words. You'll be regretting this, wishing you had more pictures –"

"Why the hell would I regret it? Go on, go off! It's your fault, you were never a good enough father, or a husband! Never interested! Always wanting to go off when the child wanted to play! If she's walked off somewhere it's only because she's got it from you! I wouldn't give a damn if –"

Rey's hand touches his arm. Kylo only realises then that his fists are clenching, that his head is dizzy and teeth grinding. "Hey," she says to him, softly. "Are you alright?"

"Let's." He starts and then breaks off. "Let's get out of here." If his voice is stilted and sharp and shaky at the edges, he doesn't want anyone to acknowledge it. He stares straight ahead, at the badly-painted yellow wallpaper and tries not to think.

Rey takes his hand.

He looks down (her small hand in his and something in him clicks) and then up. "What are you _doing_?" he protests, too loudly and Rey shushes him. He shuts up. She smiles at him. She leads him outside, all the way and all he can stare at is the back of her head.

The outside is cold and the rain hits hard against his face, droplets landing on his eyelashes and chilling his skin. Neither of them has opened their umbrellas against the harsh wind. It stops him from breathing properly, leaving him to gasp in air. The rain gathering on Rey's hair look like crystals. He stares at her hand still in his, the warmth of it against the coldness of everything else.

When was the last time someone held his hand?

He breaks it.

He steps away from her. There was something there inside, some urge to just cling on to her and hide his face against her shoulder. He can't. He is Dark, he is the Master of the Knights of Ren, he is Snoke's wise right-man hand. He saw the better path and he took it. He is the will of Darth Vader incarnate.

That house. He looks at it, he looks at it and he's so fucking angry. Gabriel didn't deserve this life. He didn't deserve this life. What the fuck did they do? Why couldn't he and her have just grown up in normal loving families, why does this happen? What sort of fucking joke is life playing? Is the Force playing? Under the Empire, shit like this wouldn't happen.

But Gabriel had it even worse than him. Sure his parents didn't talk to him until it was too late, they never gave a fuck, they always argued and argued and argued – but at least there was always food if he went looking for it. If he went looking for clothes or books or toys he was never denied, because he was the son of an ex-princess. Of a rebel hero and a wanted smuggler.

When it comes down to it all, he's weak. He's fucking weak. He calls himself Kylo Ren, it's ingrained deep in him but he's Ben Solo at the very end of it all. That weak little bastard. If he only he could fucking get away from him.

Other people aren't weak. Rey, who lived all by herself, working daily to get any food for years upon end, all by herself, so lonely and yet she never gave up hope that someone was going to come for her. Ben Solo doesn't get enough attention and he fucking breaks. Other people can go through hell and come out kind and he shatters on the first step.

He doesn't realise the lightsaber is in his hand until reality returns to him. He doesn't realise he's slashing away at the rusted fence until it's in pieces. He snarls when Rey says something, whatever it is and turns to her with his lightsaber, rushing at her.

(He's forgetting the scar on his face, on his shoulder.)

There's a few minutes of mad struggle, of clashing beam on beam – but then it's over in an instant, Kylo thrown to the ground with Rey's lightsaber at his neck. He looks at it and sees death and with his panting, scared breaths, he is back in that forest where she had been so angry and for one single moment he had been convinced she was going to kill him –

The lightsaber disappears. Kylo blinks, burning light still flashing underneath his eyelids. The rain is running down his face and he can't properly see Rey's and he doesn't know if she's angry or not – no. Rey kneels down, closer to him, and when he sits up, she leans forward to him.

He can see her face now. She's not angry. On Rey's face there is something like compassion, softer than he imagined. She's closer still and then – and then – she hugs him.

The last person who hugged him was his mother.

Her skin is cold where it touches his, her cheek against his neck. Her arms are wrapped around his shoulders, Rey herself a heavy weight in his lap. They're both soaked right through from the rain and there's mud on both of them. It's not romantic, or even friendly, it's not a scene from a story and yet it's entirely human. It's real.

His hands find their way to her waist, hands clammy on her raincoat. It's an awkward position to be in and yet it's the most natural thing in the world, to hide his face in the crook of her neck. He can more feel than hear her breathing, the steady rise and fall of her chest, the beat of her heart slowing down. His is slowing down too.

He finds that now, he is entirely calm.

"Hey," Rey whispers into his shoulder. "Are you alright now?"

"I'm feeling better," he murmurs against her neck.

xv.

When they return eventually, both of them shivering and in need of a hot shower, Gabriel runs up to greet them at the door (despite that she really should be asleep). The entire journey is justified by the bright grin on Gabriel's face when Rey gives her the teddy bear.

xvi.

Time passes and with every new day life gets a little easier. A little more normal. They both become more adjusted to this strange, silent agreement they have going on. Gabriel goes to school and they go with her and while she learns about farming they whisper to each other. Gabriel goes home with them smiling and chatters to Rey about what she learned today while Kylo cooks dinner. With every passing night they go to sleep in the same room, it's like the two of them have something less to be wary of.

There are still fights. There are still times when someone says the wrong thing to Gabriel and her face goes all wrong. There are still times when Kylo gets pissed off when something doesn't go his way and has to restrain himself from force-choking the first stranger he sees. There are still times when Rey looks at the families leaving the school and goes silent.

They work through them. Together.

xvii.

"You know," Rey says one night while they're falling asleep in the dark, "Sometimes I feel like this is what Poe calls a sleepover. With _you_."

"No, no. Real sleepovers have more holovision and eating desserts. And playing games like truth or dare." Kylo is currently experiencing vivid memories of all the incredibly embarrassing things Poe dared him to do when he was ten and Poe was twelve.

"…truth or dare?"

" _No._ That is one thing I would be _terrified_ for you to know about."

"I'll ask Gabriel."

"No winning with you, hm?" Kylo sighs, but he's smiling in the dark.

xviii.

"Felicity! Feeeeelicity! Come and see!"

Grandfather, please don't let her come. Use the Force. Don't let her in. Don't let her see me like this. The door squeaks, footsteps sounding on the carpet. Is it too late? Is everything done for? Anyone. He'll sign himself up for any cause as long as he can leave with his dignity intact –

"You're… brushing his hair?"

"Yeah! Ivan did my hair so now I'm doing his. His is really thick and shiny!" Gabriel pokes him at the back of his neck. "Heeeey, Ivaaaan, how can I get hair like yours?"

"Eat your vitamins, kid," he mutters in absolute defeat.

Rey laughs. "Well then," she says, amusement colouring her voice. "I guess you can do my hair too, eh, Gabriel?" She unbuttons her coats, throwing them on the sofa and then she kneels down before them. She reaches up a hand behind her head and then she's undoing her buns and her brown hair falls down, surprisingly longer than he thought it would be. Not that he was thinking about it.

She smiles at him and he can't help himself but smile back.

xix.

Gabriel screams while Kylo is getting changed in the bathroom.

He has to run out with only his trousers and one sock on, hair still un-brushed. "What's wrong?!" He demands, skidding into Gabriel's bedroom. He finds to his relief that Rey is already there, crouching faced towards a corner while Gabriel is hiding under the covers. "What's _happened_?"

"Spider," Rey calls back, sounding utterly calm.

"It's terrible!" Gabriel wails.

"It's only a spider," Kylo says to her, shrugging. "It's more scared of you than you are of it."

"Exactly, Gabriel," Rey joins in, straightening up with the spider cradled on the palm of her hand. "I'll take him to a better place outside." She turns and then pauses when she sees him. Her eyes flicker down to the scar on his side left by Chewie on that damned day, then up to the scar on his shoulder she left.

She has no need to look at the scar on his face; she sees it every day.

She walks past him. "I'll just be one second," she says as she passes. Kylo looks at her. What is she thinking? Does she know she's one of the only two people to leave visible scars on him? That she's the only person to scar him twice?

She goes and he knows that he has to stop thinking. So Kylo turns his attention to Gabriel and asks, "Feeling less scared?"

"Yeah," she says, peeping over the covers. She lowers them. "Hey, um, can I get a hug?"

Pause. Kylo looks at her. "Of course," he says, and he means it as he goes forward to her.

xx.

"What do you mean, a festival?"

There's a sharp line between Rey's brows. Kylo finds himself staring at it. But he really can't stare, so he remembers that he's supposed to be eating cereal and sends the spoon to his mouth. It makes a clinking sound against his teeth. What sort of festival is this? He never partook in many festivals as a child.

"It's the, um, Highpoint Celebration. The one night of the year where it stops raining for exactly eight minutes! Eight whole minutes! Only once per year! We have to go!" Gabriel's face is lit up as she talks. Poor girl doesn't realise that there's whole worlds out there where it only _rains_ once a year.

"No, no, no, I phrased it wrong," Rey waves her spoon around. "I mean, what exactly _is_ a festival?"

Gabriel blinks. "You don't know?"

Kylo stares at his bowl of cereal. How to explain what a festival is? It's such a vague term… "It's an event organised by a community to celebrate… some traditions. I guess in this case it's to celebrate the lack of rain."

"Uh, yeah." Gabriel agrees.

Rey's nose wrinkles. "I don't think I'm understanding the full picture here," she says slowly. "But it's a good thing? It will be fun?" She looks at Gabriel with this almost-helpless look on her (if anyone was idiotic enough to apply 'helpless' to Rey), like she's trying to deal with something she's never come across before.

"Yeah!" Gabriel says brightly, tapping her spoon on the table. "It'll be loads of fun!"

xxi.

The festival is not very fun at all so far.

Kylo storms through the crowd, mouth burning and wishing he could smash everything around him. It turns out the festival is mostly an excuse for adults to get drunk while the children play in a safely sanctioned area. Kylo hates drunk people and he hates parties and he hates socialising. This is not fun at all.

He glances over at the covered over area where the children are playing. Well, perhaps for Gabriel it is fun. If Kylo was a child again, he would most likely be having fun. Instead he's an adult and Darth Vader help him, he hates his life. Where's Rey when he wants to see her?

Ah. There she is. He changes his aimless strop through the crowd so that he's going towards her, unerring as a compass. He's become so used to holding an umbrella that he doesn't even drop it in his anger. Rey is leaning against a railing, idly looking up at the sky through her transparent umbrella. The rain is still falling. Whenever this eight minutes of clear sky is supposed to happen, it hasn't happened yet.

"You look terrible," she comments as he flings himself against the railing beside her, back muscles protesting. "Did someone insult Darth Vader?"

"Oh, shut up," he mutters without any heat. Kylo isn't angry at Rey. "Some – person – eugh, they _kissed_ me. Came out of nowhere."

"You should work on your dodging skills," Rey says a joke, and then more seriously, "Do you want me to go kick their ass for you?"

"No, it's fine, I'm just – annoyed."

"Have you never kissed anyone before?"

He looks at her. It sounds like a judging question, like a condemning one. But there's nothing in Rey's eyes but simple curiosity. …Perhaps if he explained, she wouldn't look at him like he's a freak. Perhaps. "I've just never…" he hesitates, swallowing. "I've never wanted to do any of that. I've never wanted to kiss anyone, or get… intimate with them. I don't think I ever will. And I'm personally fine with it, it's just… not what other people expect."

They hold each other's gaze. What is she thinking? Does she think he's broken or a freak or a robot? Because Kylo knows he's none of those, but it doesn't stop other people from saying that. Or thinking it.

He has nothing to fear here. She ends up smiling at him, a flash of white teeth and crinkled eyes. "Yes, me too. I feel the same way." She laughs a little. "But you know, it doesn't stop someone from falling in love."

"Oh." Something eases up in Kylo's chest, some tension he didn't realise he had relaxing. His shoulders sag. "I didn't expect that from you." Then again, she's always defying his expectations. He's grown used to it. It's a quality of hers he can appreciate.

"There's a lot people don't expect from me." Rey flicks away a strand of hair from her face. She never looks weak or quiet; even while doing mundane tasks she looks like she could fight the whole world and win. "I don't like it. Being underestimated will only bring you trouble."

"How would it bring you trouble? I would think it would be an asset." Kylo frowns. (When he's being truthful to himself, he can admit that most other people overestimate him. It's terrifying.)

"On Jakku…" Rey looks up at the sky, still raining, away from him. "On Jakku, if you're weak, you're a target. Many times people thought I was weak and then promptly got their asses kicked. But it's just so _annoying_."

"You never got hurt?"

"Get hurt, you die. So I didn't get hurt."

If he could be half as strong as that, Kylo would have no worries at all. Rey is strong, full stop; unrelenting in a fight, uncompromising of mind. Kylo laughs and it's a weak, hoarse sound. "And what if you're not strong?"

"Get strong." She tells him, point-blank, as curt and cold as the truth.

Kylo raises a hand to his face, traces the red line cutting his face in half, a shallow dip in his skin that the lightsaber seared into him. He was trained for so long on how to avoid getting hit in a lightsaber battle. He never truly imagined he would be hurt by a lightsaber. Luke only had one student; him. Then Rey beat him in that forest and well, perhaps it was better that he never had the chance to duel Luke in a proper fight. There's something he wants to say, an admission of sorts, a confession; you're stronger than I am and I am never going to win against you.

"I hear you," she tells him.

He looks at her. "How," he starts and then cuts himself off. He already knows the answer.

"You know," she says after a pause with a smile playing at her lips, some awareness of the irony of this in her eyes, "You need a teacher. _I_ could show you the ways of the Force."

Dead silence. Kylo snorts. "Shouldn't it be me saying that to you?" There's defeat in his voice, but he's accepted that.

"I'm being serious," she says quietly.

Kylo doesn't know what to say to that. He can't. He _can't_. "Look, I…" He stops, changes track. "Why are you here, on this mission to find a child with the Force? One neither of us has even found? The Resistance found Luke. Why aren't you training with him?"

"I _did_ go," she says, frustration underlining her voice. "I did go, I went to him, I trained with him for a while." Kylo is almost overcome by the hypocritical urge to ask _, how is Luke_? He doesn't.

Rey sighs. "I think… you know, just listen to me, let me speak. In all the myths I heard as a kid, some of them said that at the end of his life, at the end of Darth Vader's life, Luke Skywalker turned him back to the light –"

"That was a mistake," Kylo snarls.

"Let me finish!" Rey glares. "Luke Skywalker turned Darth Vader back to the light. I don't know if it's true, I wasn't there. You don't know if it's true. The point is, Luke knows. I think that when, when you… done all that you have done, you broke his heart. You broke quite a few hearts."

Kylo finds that he suddenly can't speak.

"Luke was… distant. He was lovely and the training went well – you should have seen what he pulled on me at first, he pretended he didn't even know a Skywalker – but there was always something unfathomable about him. We reached the stage of my training where he emphasised peace, serenity, a lack of emotion." Rey looks away, eyes looking through what is in front of her.

Luke never did that with him. Could he even imagine that? Kylo couldn't contain his selfish emotions to save his own life. But he still clenches his fists, resentment curling in his stomach. He was never good enough for Luke. Never good enough for his parents. What the fuck did they expect from him?

"I couldn't do it. I had to leave anyway, once I heard about a child with the Force." Rey shakes her head minutely, a gesture of regret. "But look, this is the point. Luke still thinks there's good in you, even after you… killed Han." She swallows. "Your mother still thinks there's good in you."

It's a punch to the stomach, a knife to the throat. He can't speak. He can't think. It was unfair, bringing… the bridge up. Unfair. Some corner of his mind hisses: _they were talking about me behind my back?_ But of course they were, since he left. He can only look at Rey and listen to her in silence.

"I didn't think so," she says, and for some reason he doesn't know, that _hurts_ , "I didn't think so at all. I thought you were scared and weak and you did awful things and that's all true. I didn't intend to see you here and I certainly never, ever expected all this to happen. But it's so obvious. When there's someone sitting there expecting you to be kind and harmless and good, you are. When you're pretending not to be you, you're good. I don't know what that makes you. You're whatever someone expects you to be."

It hurts. Worse than he imagined, the truth. Worse than all his internal conflicts, cutting himself to shreds – this is a gunshot through the heart, tearing away all the lies he's told everyone. A lightsaber burning away the core of his being.

"I don't know why you want to idolise Darth Vader," she says and scoffs slightly and then turns to look at him straight in the eyes. "But here it is. Darth Vader was an evil man and even he regretted everything at the end of his life. So what are you planning to do? Wait until Luke or me come to kill you and then come back to the light?"

Rey shakes her head. "No," she says and leans closer to him and her eyes are dark and solid and strong, "I won't let you."

Silence. It stretches on. There's a lump in his throat, water in his eyes. Kylo is almost ashamed to realise he's on the verge of tears. It's clear that she's silent; it's his turn now for something. "So, s-so, what do. What do you _mean_?" He spits it out, nearly choking.

Rey looks at him, and she's tired and compassionate all at once. "What I'm saying," and her voice is gentle, like she's about to break his heart, "That life is too short to do anything you don't want to do. And that you're _allowed_ to change your mind about things."

They fall quiet, both of them.

Reality filters back in around him. The noise of the chatter surrounding them. People laughing. Irritating music playing somewhere to their left. The coolness of the air, the slow dripping of water off of the umbrellas. Then what's _missing_ : the ever-constant sound of rain hitting the shells of the umbrellas like hail. Not gone; just slowing down.

Around them, people begin to take notice. A hush falls over the crowd. The rain peters out, less and less and less, until it isn't falling at all. Kylo lowers the umbrella, staring upward, not a drop of rain falling on his face. It's strange to think that this state is what is normal to him, and now he finds himself in wonder that it's even there. Adjustment is a sneaky bastard. A low hum of whispers break out over the crowd of people, but it's quiet, respectful. He's getting it now. There's something real to this feeling of the rain stopped falling. Something to take note of in a natural event.

"Hey, you see this?" Rey whispers.

Kylo's still looking at the sky. Grey and cloudy but he could at least look at it because you can't look at the sky when rain is falling in your eyes. This is why the natives of this planet wait for this, these eight minutes where at least it isn't fucking raining again. "Yeah," he breathes the words, "I see it."

"I never thought I would miss the lack of rain in the desert," Rey says, half-longing and half-wonder.

He tears his eyes away from the sky to look at her, her wide eyes and reverent face. She notices, eyes sliding to him.

"I can't give you an answer right now," he tells her. "But I will, one day."

They spend the rest of those eight precious minutes in silence.

xxii.

When the festival begins to wrap up, Gabriel runs up, having found them in the crowd. Her face is shining as she chatters away: "Did you see that?! It was amazing! It actually stopped raining! For real! And I barely even noticed at first, I only realised when everyone around me was looking up at the sky so I looked up too and! It wasn't raining! Imagine living somewhere where… it doesn't rain! Imagine!" Then she looks between them and stops talking, her face becoming unsure.

"Is… is everything alright?"

"It will be," Kylo answers her. "Come on, let's go."

After a moment, Gabriel smiles up at him. "If you say so, then it's okay!" she chirps.

What the hell did he do, to be so trusted?

xxiii.

Then the call comes, the one to ruin his time here.

Kylo had known that it would come eventually. He couldn't stay forever there with no repercussions. He was supposed to be on a mission and the mission requires his superior to check in on him. Especially him, the only other Force-sensitive gone to the Dark side. He's _special_. The thought is making him a little sick, but a part of him still hisses, _that's right._

Snoke's voice over the subspace transceiver is like a ghost's; full of grandeur and stuck in the past. Kylo's still relieved to hear it, automatically. With Snoke, he knows what he has to do, he knows that he can do it well. "Kylo. How has your mission been going? Have you found the child with the Force yet?"

The terrifying part of talking to Snoke right now is telling him that so far he's _failed_. "Well, no, not yet. But I will, soon. This village is a large one and there are many children and there is… confusion in the Force here." Kylo is reminded of his pleas on the day Rey defeated him; I can get the information out of the girl, just let me do it!

"Confusion?! In the Force?! …do you think it is because of the rumoured child?"

Kylo's heartbeat stills, glad that Snoke does not realise it is because of Rey. He cannot focus, he cannot find this child. "It could be. Or it could be that this rumoured child is nothing more than a rumour. I am beginning to think so."

"We have no more time to waste on rumours. If you cannot find the child soon, there is no doubt that eventually the Resistance will hear wind of these rumours and send their scavenger girl. Is there any sign of her?"

Heartbeat normal. No passion. "None. Or it could be that she has already found the child and left."

Silence on Snoke's end. "If that has happened, all is lost. We must not let these traitors win. I am sending some units of Stormtroopers to your position on the planet. They will be there within three days. Raze the village to the ground and let no child live." End of communication. Line goes dead.

That was an order. Kylo feels sick to his stomach.

xxiv.

Kylo has his own helmet here with him on this mission. He doesn't need to strictly have it here, as he's supposed to be undercover and the point of wearing a mask for the majority of the time is that his face is not widely recognised throughout the galaxy. He's glad he brought it – it's a comfort for this occasion, when he can't talk to his grandfather's helmet.

He looks at his own and wonders if one day it will look like Vader's, melted and old. If one day he will betray the Dark and die afterwards and his body will be burned in a funeral pyre, helmet and all. If anyone will stand there and give a fuck. Is this really what he wants out of life? What does he want? Does he want fame and glory, ruling the galaxy? To put the galaxy to right, whatever the hell that means? At the same time, he knows what he desperately does not want. For people to stand there, looking at that Ben Solo ( _Kylo Ren_ ) and saying _he's so weak!_

He'd do anything, to avoid that.

Knowing what you don't want is the first step to knowing what you do want. He tells himself this, because not wanting to be _weak_ (weak in battle, weak of heart) leads him to one path, the only path. _Through victory, my chains are broken._ He does not want to be the traitor himself, the undecided, the one who can't make up his fucking mind about what he wants to do in life. He has to stick to what he's done. Make a fucking commitment.

His heart's betraying him. It is one thing to know rationally what will help you achieve what you want to do and another to actually want to do something. His head goes one way and his heart goes another and that's the story of Kylo Ren ( _Ben Solo_ ). He doesn't want to leave them. It's the most pathetic protest ever; I'm having fun here! I'm enjoying myself! I don't wanna go just yet! Like some little brat would say.

He looks at his own helmet, moulded in the idea of Vader's. "Grandfather," he says, desperately, "You committed yourself to your cause for over thirty years. Give me a sign. Tell me how to stay strong."

As always, there is no reply from the empty air around him.

Rey and Gabriel are inside, sleeping, while Kylo Ren sits outside, sheltered from the rain by the overhanging roof. He does not want to leave them. The idea of Gabriel waking up tomorrow and him not being there, of just walking out on her, makes him sick, stomach acid burning on his tongue. The idea of Rey looking at him the next they would meet – inevitably, inevitably – with disappointment in her eyes makes him scared of that future.

What can he do?

He thought he had faced this battle before. He thought he would win it. On that bridge, he did what even monsters would grow cold at the thought of doing. He took the plunge. He killed his own father. Never again would his father smile at him, never again would he see his parents even together, never again he would hear some snarky comment and a laugh. There were bad times, there were _lots_ of bad times, but was it worth removing the possibility of ever having any good times again?

He thought he would win. He thought he would make himself irredeemable. He thought; Han Solo won't be around to save anyone anymore, me or anyone else. He can't redeem me. Yet all he's left with is regret and still Rey says to him: _Your mother thinks there's still good in you_. Han Solo isn't around to save him from the Dark and still he finds himself being torn apart.

Perhaps he could just… take the easy way out.

If he told Rey in advance that the Stormtroopers were coming, perhaps he could convince her to just go and take Gabriel back to her Resistance. It would be helping the enemy for sure and he doesn't like the idea of Gabriel with the Resistance, but he knows she's safe with Rey. Then the Stormtroopers would come, they would find the child and kill it and then they would be off.

No. It would never work. Rey still has a stake in finding the child with the Force and even if the child didn't exist, she would still stay to fight any Stormtrooper who was ordered to destroy an innocent city, even if she had to fight an entire army. (If he's being entirely honest, he's slightly convinced that Rey _could_ take on the entire Stormtrooper army and win.)

At the end of the night, without any sleep, Kylo is still left with the same questions and no resolutions. What can he do? Not make up his mind at all. The time had come to redeem all those _think about it laters_ and he still can't do anything at all.

xxv.

Kylo has been quiet the entire time they've been walking. He doesn't know if that makes him suspicious or what. He has a lot to think about, twenty-nine years' worth and not enough time to think it in. Does Rey find him suspicious? Does she look at his pale face over breakfast, distant eyes during the walk to school and figure it all out?

He was terrified of Snoke figuring it out but right now he's even more terrified of Rey figuring his thoughts out. He doesn't want to see her pass judgement on him, to look at him and say with her eyes: what a failure. There's no real way to dress it up as anything other than the quiet wish it is; Kylo wants Rey to like him.

Which has 'bad idea, bad want' written all over it, because he's done _awful_ things to her. He attacked her friends, he kidnapped her, he interrogated her, he… killed her friend (his father), he defeated her closest friend in combat. Kylo had always known there was no way the tranquillity of this mission right now could last. Beyond all rational thought, he finds himself wanting it to.

The choice is on him, isn't it?

You know, he's almost jealous of FN-2187. A traitor to the cause, but he knew what he wanted to do with his life. He knew what he wanted to do and so he went and did it. Kylo is beginning to realise how rare that quality is, how rare it is that someone can stay true to their true nature.

"You seem distracted," remarks Rey and Kylo jerks.

"No, no. I'm fine."

Rey stops walking. Kylo does too. She looks up at him and he looks back, willing her not to call him out, not to figure it out, not to say I'm ashamed of you. Ahead of them, Gabriel keeps wandering up the wooden bridge, not thinking she needs to stop. Neither Kylo nor Rey seem to notice.

"There's something wrong with you," Rey tells him, eyes dark.

"No," he protests, "There's nothing –"

He's cut off by a crash. The sound of breaking wood. The high scream of a child. The blood in Kylo's veins freeze. He looks around to see part of the wooden railing broken, some surging enormous creature with rows of teeth and blue skin and –

There's a great crack and the wood underneath Gabriel's feet snaps, falls apart. Then she's gone too, falling too and something in Kylo's head just goes _no_.

He lifts his hand. Concentrates. _The Force shall free me._ Gabriel rises, up and out of the jaws of death, eyes wide and staring at him. Then she falls because he can't maintain it forever, and already Rey is rushing forward to Gabriel.

Gabriel falls on her knees at the edge of the bridge, rain starting to drench her hair, a look of shock on her face like Kylo has never seen. Rey drags her away from the edge, putting Gabriel behind her and peering down into the water to check if the sea monster will return. Gabriel's eyes are fixed on Kylo.

He stares back, silent.

Then Gabriel opens her mouth and says, startled, "You can do that _too_?"

Oh.

Rey stiffens behind Gabriel and everything clicks horribly into place in Kylo's head. Of course. Of fucking course. Whatever hope there was in Gabriel's face, it drains away at the look on Kylo's face. Gabriel says something. He doesn't hear it, staring through her with distant eyes. He tries to sense it, he tries to look it but he can't, there is only Rey – but it must be there – and ah.

It's the shock that lets him sense it for one brief moment, his head so blank that he can tune into the Force better. He sees it – the Force surrounding her, surrounding Gabriel. If he didn't know he was looking for it, he wouldn't have seen it. He really is weak, isn't he? So fucking useless at using the Force that he couldn't even see it before his own eyes.

The shock is wearing off, anger slipping in like a familiar friend. Of course. That's why Rey took such an interest in Gabriel, why she wanted to stay. How could he have been so fucking stupid? Jedi don't care about anyone. They only care about whether this kid is going to be good enough for the Light, that is. And now – and now Rey is probably going to kill him and take the kid away to be fucking trained as a Jedi and he. Why the hell is he feeling so _betrayed_?

He has a mission, he thinks to himself, and feels like crying. He's fucked up his life so badly.

"I didn't want to show it to anyone," Gabriel whispers. "I don't think I'm supposed to. I don't think my parents would like it very much…"

"Kylo," Rey says, raising her head to look at him, cautious. "Kylo."

Well, Kylo knows what he has to do. Letting someone trust you when you're supposed to kill them is a shitty thing to do even by his measure. All trust has to be broken when it comes to anyone trusting him. "Gabriel," he says, not really thinking, "My name isn't really Ivan Loire."

"What?" Gabriel looks uneasy. "What are you talking about?"

"And her name isn't Felicity Dameron, either."

"Kylo."

"Do you know what the Force is, Gabriel?"

" _Kylo_." Rey's turning to face him, something heavy and determined in the way she's looking at him.

"W-Why are you calling him that name?" Gabriel says to Rey, looking up at her with fearful eyes and hunched shoulders. There's guilt in him for making her look like that, guilt like the pain in the wound Chewie gave him.

"That's his name," Rey tells her, serious with a side of apologetic, never taking her eyes off him. "Kylo Ren, one of the commanders of the First Order."

The rumours of the First Order have spread to so many planets. Even Gabriel knows enough to still in horror at that statement, backing away unconsciously. "No. No, it isn't true."

Kylo nods to Rey, slipping his lightsaber into his hand. "And she's Rey, known ally to the Resistance. No last name, as far as I can tell."

In another life, he might have called her _Jedi_ and she might have called him _Sith_. But those are just faint fairytales now. There are so few Force-sensitives left in the galaxy, that the labels that mark them out as enemies are not Light and Dark.

"No." Gabriel shakes her head. "No, no, no. This is just a joke, right? Stop it. Now!"

"It isn't your fault," Rey tells her, reaching for the lightsaber in her pocket.

Kylo's heart beats faster, a thrum of anxious energy in him. Does he want to do this? Is it right? Why is he so weak as to have these doubts? There's no time left. He has to do this. He has to. There is no other choice. There is only the Dark side.

Rey steps forward, in front of Gabriel and her frozen face. Rey, with a will stronger than the foundations of the earth, raises her lightsaber. Flicks it on and that brilliant blue beam alights. The rain hisses as it falls onto the blade. This is how it should be, between the two of them. Enemies with laser swords, fighting until one of them falls.

He raises his own lightsaber, the one he built. Years of experience of wielding it mean he can flick it on without having to look to check he's not in danger of cutting his own hand off with the hilt. He's still feeling like he's back when he first had it, diving in at the deep end with no idea of what he's doing, in danger of _something_ at every second.

Rey's eyes are intent upon him, fierce. Something clicks _again_ , and Kylo realises he's seen the same expression before, the same eyes in another life. Just like Luke, the way he looked at Snoke, on the day Ben Solo became Kylo Ren. It should make him angry, it should make him hate her. Instead, he's just afraid.

He can't do this.

All those hours of deliberating and waving, and when it's at the tipping point, the very last second, Kylo makes his decision. It's one he's always known he'd make, deep down. You can think and think and think about it, but when your soul's on the wire, you can't deny what your heart says.

He drops his lightsaber. It clatters on the wood.

"I can't do this," he says, gulping shallow breaths. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry –"

Rey's eyes widen, hand reaching out; she might have called out to him, but he's turning away, too late. He turns and he runs, he goes without knowing where the hell he wants to go. It's done. He's done it, once and for all. He can't stay Light, he can't stay Dark. Can't do anything at fucking all.

Look. If there is a hell, it's for the indecisive. Kylo's there now – in that inbetween of everything. The eternal fence of the terrified, who don't know what side they want to jump onto. He's running, but there's nowhere he can go to get away from his problems; they're inside him.

xxvi.

The heart of the problem is this: the man born Ben Solo has always been far too good at pretending to be anything other than Ben Solo. Life isn't easy, not for anyone, but he chose to solve his problems by sinking himself entirely into an identity anyone else would give him. If he was feared as Kylo Ren, if he was loved as Ivan Loire, at least it meant that someone was paying attention to him. Call it childish, call it selfish, but it's very human.

The heart of the problem is this: who told him being Ben Solo wasn't good enough?

xxvii.

Kylo doesn't even know where he is right now.

He's lost. Either it's the endless rain making his mental map wrong or perhaps he just hasn't been here before. It doesn't matter. He still can't find his way to anywhere he knows. He dropped his umbrella back at the scene and now he's drenched with cold water. It's pathetic fallacy in a very pathetic way.

There's nothing left to think about. Nothing left to deliberate about. His worst fear has come true – he's so weak. He really honestly can't do anything in this life. He can't stick at anything. What the hell is he even good for?

He stops walking. He's tired. The human body can't keep walking forever. So he just sits down at the edge of the road, crosses his arms across his knees and buries his head in his arms. His scar presses uncomfortably against the fabric of his coat but he ignores it. The pain doesn't do anything to him anymore.

Time passes. He doesn't know how much, how long he sits there. Kylo just wants to fall asleep and never wake up. It's said you can drown in an inch of rain. If he just lay down, would all his misery be over?

Then the rain stops hitting his head. He doesn't realise it for a moment, water still trickling down the back of his neck. When he does he raises his head automatically to see why. Then he wishes he hadn't.

Rey is standing over him, umbrella held over him. Her eyes are softer than he's ever seen them. Why he has she come? Has she come to kill him? Quite honestly at this point he'd welcome it. He opens his mouth to say something, can't, closes his mouth, opens it again and then finally speaks, "Hello."

"Hello," she replies quietly and then sits down beside him, close so that the umbrella covers both of them. Her knees knock against his legs. She doesn't say anything, just looking at him with her brown eyes. He looks back, unable to look away and yet suddenly very calm. He almost asks her, why are you here, and then realises that it doesn't matter why. All that does matter is that she is here. Still here, still coming after him. Kylo doesn't know a whole lot but he can recognise a sign of faith.

"I'm half in love with you," he tells her easily. It's an admission, a confession, but right now it's the least of his worries. Someone like Kylo Ren isn't supposed to love like this, simply. He can love like hate, like passion, but this quiet emotion isn't supposed to be for him. But he isn't Kylo Ren right now. He isn't Ben Solo either.

He thinks she knows, anyway.

Rey reaches up and brushes away the strands of hair from his face, looking completely unsurprised. Her touch is very gentle against his rain-numbed skin. "I could love you. Given time. But we have all the time in the world to talk about that, don't we?"

That's enough of an answer for him. As good as he can get where he is right now. Something in his chest relaxes, shoulders slumping. He sighs deeply. Breathe in, breathe in. The techniques for letting go of anger never worked on him, but he's not angry at all right now. Just exhausted, like all his emotions have run so hard they've dried up and left him.

"You know," Rey starts, her voice the loudest thing in the world. "I left training with Luke for a few reasons." It might seem like a non-sequitur but he listens to her anyway. Rey is always worth listening to.

"One of them," she continues, "Was because while Luke is a great man, he still buys into this Light and Dark nonsense. I don't think he always has, but. I don't. I just don't. I don't buy into being that to be a good person, on the side of the Light, a Jedi, you have to be emotionless? And getting angry or hateful automatically makes you evil and Dark? It's just – there's a lot in life to get angry about."

She traces patterns of circles in the droplets of rain on her raincoat. "I don't want to be a Jedi. But saying that doesn't mean I'm going to be a Sith." Then she raises her head and looks him right in the eyes. "You've tried both paths and failed at both, Kylo."

He is too tired for that to hurt anymore. "Yes," he admits, eyes lowered.

"Come with me." Her voice is a mixture of asking and demanding. His head jerks up to stare at her in surprise. "Come with me and we'll put things _right_ , Kylo. We won't be Jedi or Sith, or Light or Dark. Let's just be people. People who get angry but also get happy. People who have powers they use to help others. Just people who know the Force."

Kylo knows what this is. It's helping hand to someone who's fallen down, a sign in the woods to someone who's lost their way. He knows in his heart what he wants to do and it is the simplest thing in the world to open his mouth answer with, "Yes, I'll go with you."

It's giving in and giving up and he is so relieved.

She blinks at him and then smiles, gloriously. It doesn't feel like a movie moment, like he's been saved. It just feels like a beat of time passing, like he's been given an opportunity to go on with his life. The world around them is quiet and Kylo is very content, just sitting here with Rey in the rain.

xxviii.

Time passes. Then there's a splashing of boots in the rain, a young voice calling out. Kylo already knows who it is before he looks. He's coming out of his exhaustion, enough to feel guilty, enough to feel worried. (He suspects he will be feeling much of the former for his entire life.)

He raises his head and calls out, "Gabriel!"

There she is in the rain, Kylo's umbrella open over her head, her young face struck by a look of deep concern. She sees them and comes hurrying over. Rey twitches at his side, an ashamed look suddenly coming over her. It doesn't suit her, but it never suits anyone.

"You two!" Gabriel cries out as she approaches, slowing down to stare at them sitting there. "You – Rey? You just…"

"I'm sorry, Gabriel. I just – I wanted to run after Kylo." Rey lowers her head. "But that's not an excuse for leaving you. I'm so sorry."

"It's okay," Gabriel says immediately. Then she hesitates, looking to him. "Look, I… I don't think I really get this. But I, you said I have this, the Force thing. And yeah that sounds right to me, in a weird way. But you're from the, the you know and you acted like you were… about to fight her or something, to get me. And that's not okay, except… you didn't."

The little girl stands there, looking at him unhappily and it's breaking his heart even more. "I guess I wanna know whether I can be sure you're not gonna hurt me, Mister Kylo or whatever. Are you really… really with the First Order people?"

He can only say the truth. "I was," he tells her, looking into her eyes and seeing something change in them. "But no more. I'm done with them now. I'm done with all of this."

Gabriel nods, then looks at Rey. "And you're with the Resistance? So are they good people or what?"

"I can't say that all of them are," Rey tells her and it sounds like she's decided to be honest too. They spent so long lying to this child about who they were – Gabriel deserves nothing more but complete honesty from this point forward. "But I trust Finn and Poe with my entire life, and I know that the General is one of the greatest people I've ever met."

Rey looks at him and something unspoken passes between them. You're going to have to talk to your mother eventually. I know.

"Okay," Gabriel accepts. Then she begins to speak, raw and stumbling. "But even though it was mean, lying, I… wanna go with you two, if you're going somewhere. You can be nice. And if you two have this… the Force or whatever – right?"

They nod in union.

"Well then, I want to go too. I want to know about what this Force _is_." Gabriel finishes. "So what are we going to do now?"

"We're going to have to leave," Rey admits.

"Actually," Kylo starts, guilt in his stomach when the two of them look at him, "There's a shipment of Stormtroopers on their way here. They'll be here in two days. There was nothing I could do to stop it, it was Snoke's order."

Rey takes his hand. They look at each other. "It's alright," she says, a burning strength in her eyes. "I can call in the Resistance. They'll be here long before that. And when they come, you two come with me. We'll go see Leia." Once again, Kylo is just overwhelmed by her conviction. He might be about to cry.

There's the sound of pattering boots, and then Gabriel is seating herself down on his other side, umbrella protecting her from the rain. She reaches out with her little hand and takes his other hand. Her eyes don't hold the same amount of trust they had before, but they have more hope. "And everything will be alright?"

"Perhaps not now," Rey says, but her hand in his is warm. "Perhaps not ever. But we'll try as hard as we can to make it better." When her hand clenches his, nails slightly digging in, it feels like a promise.

Kylo smiles and says nothing. Nothing's ever perfect, but for now he's content. It's strange to think about rationally, him sitting there having thrown away everything, yet sitting in the rain with the strongest person he's ever known and a little girl with far more hope than him holding his hands. His heart accepts it as the right place to be anyway.


End file.
